A Little Practice
by Blit'zeen
Summary: Christine and Meg are close. Unusually close. The Phantom despairs that it's not his ineptitude but her preferences which stand in his way. A/N: I want to practice my editing skills. If you have any fiction you want me to look at, hit me up! Refer to my profile for more info


**A Little Practice**

Adonis would not be more handsome than this little flower. His lips could not be as lush nor as red as its petals. His mane could not be as glossy as its stem. And his eyes could not be as bright as its sparkling dew. Erik had pruned off all but one thorn - a reminder to receive his gift carefully, for he was ever capable of terrible things. In the thick gloom of the passageway, the rose shone.

He intended it for Christine, his protege, his little dove, whose practice-room awaited just ahead, behind a revolving mirror. He slinked towards it, tilting his wristwatch into the lamplight seeping in. A quarter to seven, it read. No hitches so far.

Nothing would get in his way this evening. Not his hesitation. Not a closed florist. Not an accident with an underground lagoon. Nothing. He'd slip the rose, nicked from its bouquet that very morning, behind the open lid of the piano. And, at their lesson's close, he would leave Christine with a flourish and something beautiful to contemplate.

Today revealed his identity as her secret admirer. Today broke a year-long chain of flowers he'd left unlabelled except for an ebony ribbon. If he was lucky - really, impossibly lucky - and she fell into his arms and professed undying love for him, today marked the end of all his swallowed serenades. He kissed the magazine in his other hand for good luck and tucked it into his jacket pocket. Today was the day!

But Erik celebrated too soon. Peering past the haze of the mirror, he found Christine already perched on the edge of her stool. Unusually animated, she twirled her fingers in her flaxen hair. One knee jogged up and down and her gaze skittered around the room. She glowed, despite the thrice-mended gown and threadbare slippers. Anonymous or not, his more practical gifts never found their way into her wardrobe.

_Foiled, _he thought, at the sight of her. _Can't hide the rose now._

He fingered the flower for a minute, just gazing at the delicate curve of her cheek and the radiant, uncomplicated glimmer in her eyes. His hand hovered above the mirror's latch. A clammy sweat gathered on his palms.

At last, his hand dropped. He couldn't do it. Couldn't go out there with the rose in his naked hands. Erik sighed, opened his suit jacket, and scowled at the inside pocket. It would have to do for now. He poked the flower inside, leaving the top few buttons loose to give the petals space. The gleaming bud nestled there, quite hidden. Its dewdrops shone like pairs of hopeful eyes.

He straightened his collar one last time. Smoothed his hair back. Then, he stepped past the mirror onto her floor.

"Christine."

She stopped jiggling about and shot up.

"Good evening, Maestro. Are you well?"

"Very well, my dear." He went to the piano, measuring the young woman in his periphery. Her lips were twitching, oscillating between a meek smile and his favourite, dawning grin. He found himself smiling along with her as he sat down. "You seem happy."

"I am!" Ah, there was that grin, breaking over her face like sun-rays through a morning mist. "Meg - she did it. She was promoted to principal dancer!" Christine leaned over his shoulder, her summery smell enveloping him, her wild hair kissing his back.

Erik nearly dropped his gloves.

"It was you, wasn't it?" she said. "You sent that recommendation everyone's been whispering about."

He hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about, and he most certainly hadn't sent any letters. But seeing her eyes alight and cheeks aglow, his answer just tumbled out.

"Yes, I sent it."

"I knew it!" Christine punched the air. He turned on the piano-bench to watch her spin across the room, a blossom of white amongst the heavy wood and rich drapery. "She was gonna get it someday, but M. Poligny - you know how he is." She steadied herself on the arm of the corner chaise. "This is brilliant, Maestro, just brilliant! Thank you."

"You're welcome, my dear."

There came a pause. Then Christine started up again, gushing about her best friend. Her pink hands ducked and wove through the air, alighting on her breast now and then before taking flight again.

"She works so hard, but she's always got time for everyone! She's truly the loveliest, sweetest…" Christine looked at him and away again. "Well, everyone thinks so." Her teeth flashed as she chattered.

Rarely had Erik seen her so unfettered. Christine was a simperer, not a beamer. A woman of dropped gazes, serious nods, and fingers twisting in sleeves. How the thought of Meg transformed her!

He put aside his gloves and leaned forwards in his seat, fixing her with an unflinching stare.

A flush spilled into her face.

Was there something about that Meg he couldn't see? Her grace - well, _he _was graceful. In a dangerous way, or so he'd practiced. Her kindness - well, _he _was kind to the only person that mattered. And her smile... He tried that now and hoped it didn't come across predatory.

Now Christine's words were running together, tripping over each other's tails like puppies not yet grown into their feet. She would stop at times, and glance at him, and talk even faster. It made no sense.

All of a sudden, the evidence fell into place. The high colour, the restless gaze, the runaway pitch of her voice. These were signals. _Love Signals, _according to that gossip column he'd never admit to reading.

But surely Meg - ordinary, _female _Meg Giry - didn't…

Her eyes. He had to see Christine's eyes.

Erik crossed the room in two strides and seized her flapping hands. She went still, silent, her pulse rushing and fluttering against his fingers. Her gaze dropped from his within a heartbeat. Nonetheless, he'd seen her pupils blown wide with exhilaration. The _Love Signal _you couldn't ignore.

How had he missed it? All those nights locked away in the Giry room while the Madame worked late. How they flew into each other's arms after a performance. Their tendency to walk hand in hand -

"What are you doing?" She squeaked.

"I… wanted to check if you were cold." She wasn't. She'd gone hot, her palms damp. The warmth perfused his skeletal hands like the first true day of spring after a gruelling winter.

God, but what was he thinking? There lay his fingers, the corpses of them naked on her skin. Vile - just vile! It was none of his business if she felt something unorthodox for her friend. He had no claim on her. Nor should he ever.

Erik threw down her hands.

"Take your stance," he snapped. "We begin."

-,-

"I've made a right fool of myself again, Nadir," said Erik, pacing back and forth on his Persian rug. Each agitated step in his long stride jabbed into the red threads like the thrust of a dagger. Pain spiked at his breast every time he turned around, but it barely registered. "I have been rude today. Obnoxious. Uncommunicative. It's no wonder she has no interest in me."

He speared the monkey figurine with his fiercest glare, waiting for a reply. It stared back without so much as flinching. Wreathed in the glow from a dozen candelabras and backed by one immense organ, Nadir exuded austerity. Erik had to drop his gaze, in the end.

"You're right, naturally. I'm making excuses. It's not just me she has no interest in. It's the entire male race."

He stomped on the creakiest floorboard, which see-sawed. Its far end slammed into Nadir's display-table. With a coarse, laughing rattle, the monkey clapped a slow clap. His cymbals scraped together in a sceptical sigh.

Erik shook his head. "Nadir, no. I know I'm right. She turns down the richest suitors, never blushes at the dirtiest tale. Have you _seen _how close she and that insolent girl are?" He scoffed. "Of course you haven't, trapped down here all day."

Nadir went silent. Erik wanted to cry.

"I've left her roses, for God's sake-"

He stopped.

_Oh, confound it._ The rose meant for today! It still nestled under his suit jacket with its one thorn digging into his chest. Crushed beyond repair, no doubt.

Erik opened his coat.

Nadir stopped vibrating on his low table, trying to be serious, but no amount of stillness could quell the waves of contempt roiling off him in waves. If Nadir was not his only companion, he would have dumped him, lead filigree and all, into the Seine.

The rose came blinking into the light. It's fragrance sprang after in pursuit. The seductive red still glowed against the solemn green stem. Even some of the glistening dewdrops remained intact on the spiralling lips of the bud, winking at him. He beheld it with a kind of shock, like discovering a perfect snowflake on your sleeve having long come inside and removed your hat and coat.

So handsome a flower. Pity, it would be wasted. His lair, after all, was no home for lovely things.

But nor was the lagoon just outside of it. Nor the Seine. Nor the wretched corridors of the Opera Populaire. He buried what was left of his nose in the flower, inhaling its wintry smell.

From the edge of the rug, Nadir looked to be giving him a sidelong glance.

"What?"

But Erik already knew. He could not let the beauty of his last rose wither into darkness. He would leave it like all its predecessors. Just under Christine's sheet, unlabelled except for a black ribbon.

It was just as well that he hadn't ascribed his face to the tokens today. She would've thought him a lecher.

All the better, he supposed, for he was that and worse.

-,-

Erik threaded himself between the supports of the hollow walls. Up ahead, a line of light near the ceiling beckoned to him. He'd installed a hatch there which opened directly above Christine's pillow. Invisible when shut and no wider than a fist, it afforded him a view of the entire dormitory if he wished. A wire hook hung beside it, which he could use to manipulate and even retrieve objects from the room.

"Why do you say that?"

His chest seized at the sound of Meg's voice, at once spurring him on and weighing him down. Heart lurching, he spidered up the wall.

"I was just standing there, talking, and I lost myself completely, you know? It's so frustrating!"

"I know, honey."

"And after all this time! I suspected he'd caught on or something, I did - he was _looking _at me - but I couldn't even meet his eye. Oh, Meg, what am I to do?"

Some low murmuring followed, muffled by the plaster.

Erik scraped his knuckles in his haste to reach the slit. Now, at last, he made it, wedged his elbows and knees into place, and worked it open by degrees.

The women were sitting close to each other on the floor, their backs propped against Christine's bed.

"Actually, maybe just keep practising and surprise him," Meg was saying. The conversation made no sense to him. It caught his attention, instead, that their legs pressed together and Meg played with Christine's fingers as if they belonged to her.

"What?" Christine pulled her hand back, covering her reddening face.

"Like this." And Meg cupped the back of her head and kissed her.

Erik almost toppled from his perch. Everything about this was wrong. They were girls - girls - sharing what should transpire between a man and a woman! He watched, paralysed, as his student hummed, her face tilting. The rose crumpled in his shaking fist.

They broke apart.

"Meg!" she cried, laughing and frowning at once. "I told you not to do that out of the blue!" The other woman ducked her chin and grinned.

"Got you laughing." Her voice dropped half an octave. "And hey, at least you've still got something."

A pause. A sigh.

"It's hardly any use, is it?"

Erik could hardly guess what that meant. Especially now as they brushed foreheads, looking every bit in love. He clambered down the beam with trembling legs and a twist in his throat. _There you have it, _he thought in a daze. _The little dove of my heart, forever out of reach._

When he shuffled into the gondola, he found the rose scrunched in his palm. Its head hung limp over its crushed stem, half of the petals missing. He lobbed it without looking into the freezing waters of the lagoon. And that accursed magazine with its bedeviled gossip column? He wrestled it out of his pocket and dumped it in too.

The music that night, a tortured, demented thing, might have been audible even above five storeys of stone.

-,-

Erik didn't stop the lessons. The devil himself would have to fling him into the abyss before that happened.

And so, the very next day, he dragged himself to their practice room, one of the many cellars designated for storage and never peeked into again. The furniture he'd placed so artfully appeared to droop. The air smelled flat and stale. Even the vibrant drapery, intense reds on absolute black, at first installed to absorb echoes and then multiplied because he'd loved them so much, had lost colour overnight.

He sat at the piano and plonked out a funeral march as he waited.

Christine's humming filtered into earshot within minutes. She slipped inside, smiled at his song, found her music, rolled her neck and shoulders. All as if nothing had changed. Watching her in his periphery, his fingers fell a little heavier.

Preparations complete, he greeted her and launched into a set of scales. Abrupt, perhaps, but Christine simply touched up her posture and began without question.

The lesson went as militantly as it began.

As did the next. And the one after that.

If God deemed him her tutor and nothing more, he would make it so.

-,-

A week passed. The lessons, though no more stringent than usual, bordered on grim. This evening, Erik started, once again, with a rough greeting and a cue to warm up.

Christine missed the entry of their first piece. He broke off with a discordant clang, waiting for an apology. He received a tap on the shoulder instead. Something in him trembled at the touch, screeching at him to play - Go! Quick! - just as instinct compels a spooked horse to bolt.

And he did, from the top, perhaps louder than necessary.

"Maestro, is there something wrong?" His fingers faltered but didn't stop. Christine spoke over the music, close - too close - to his ear. "You have been sullen and closed for a week now - I can't imagine why."

He scoffed inwardly, placated outwardly. "Nothing is the matter."

"Then explain yourself. Please, I can't stand the way you've been. Are you ill? Does a composition trouble you?"

"Your concern touches me, Christine, but I assure you-"

His protege shimmied in beside him on the piano bench. Her side brushed against his, soft and warm. There hovered her rounded shoulder, just under his arm. There rested her supple thigh, just alongside his. Erik broke out in a cold sweat. He wanted to edge away, flee the room and press closer all at the same time. It was paralysing.

"You assure me?" She prompted, but her voice shivered.

"I assure you, I am just fine." He tried to keep playing, but his fingers tripped easily, and he had not even completed two bars before her hands enfolded one of his.

He stared at their clasped hands. Hers was young and whole, silky despite the callouses from her washing duties. His, huge and grey in comparison, looked like a big dead leaf. He felt as if he might dry up and go crackling to pieces.

"Please, talk to me. You've never been like this before."

"I saw- I saw something I shouldn't have seen."

So weak he sounded. But he was the opera ghost! He was supposed to have seen horrors and wonders nobody had even imagined. He was supposed to know the comings and going of every snivelling staffer, every twitching cockroach. Nothing should faze him.

He dared to peek into Christine's face, into her great, imploring eyes. "Never you mind," he said. "It doesn't concern you."

"You don't come to see me anymore," she whispered. "Can it be so bad that you don't come to see me anymore?"

He stiffened. "You know that I watch you?"

Sadness tinged her smile. "I hear it when you move through the walls. I thought they were rats at first, but..."

"And you are not upset?" Erik's mind raced. If she could hear him, was she aware of his presence that night with Meg? Was she aware that he knew?

If so, there was no excusing his behaviour. This wasn't the Middle East. Here, homosexuality was fraught with ridicule, even danger. As young women, they had it easier, but social propriety determined one's prospects at an Opera House...

"I'm not upset," she was saying. "It's a comfort, knowing you watch over me. You're still my own personal angel, you know?"

The bloody stub of his heart melted at this. She deserved more than his cowardice, more than his silence. Whether she knew he'd seen them or not, she deserved a little solidarity from her guiding figure.

He steeled himself with a long breath.

"Christine, you must know then that I saw you with Meg." Her mouth dropped open. "It's alright," he added. "It's ah - it's not our choice who we feel that sort of tenderness for. You have nothing to fear from me."

"Erik, no, it's not what you think-"

"You feel something for each other, don't you, that women do not usually feel for women?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"Do not concern yourself with what I think, Christine. Love is worth so much more than that."

She dropped his hand and started waving hers about in the fashion of swatting at mosquitoes, as she did when consternation scrambled her words before she could speak them.

"The Opera House is a rumour mill, my dear," he bulldozed on, finally using the endearment abandoned over the past week. "If people see you together, beyond holding hands or - or kissing -" and he thanked inwardly the mask that hid his grimace, "those rumours could shred your ambitions to pieces."

Christine tried to interrupt him, but he was determined to speak his piece before he backed out entirely.

"Ballet rats - they can handle gossip. But divas must select theirs carefully. The stories that sell - imminent marriage, even a scandalous affair - they're okay, provided everybody knows that the raunchiest ones aren't true. Rumours of this nature..."

Gentle hands on either side of his face cut him short. Christine's sparkling eyes rose up, ate up his field of vision.

"Erik." Her breath whispered over his lips. A hot, prickling sensation flashed down his back. His tongue deadened.

"Yuh," he said, staring at her mouth.

Her hand crept up behind his head. Their lips met. Tentatively at first, then quite completely, like entering a lake. Erik's heart, already doing rather a job, ratcheted up to record speeds. His hands took off out of their own accord and fluttered near her shoulders.

God in heaven, what was he supposed to do? Her mouth pressed so, yielded so. Softer than his pillow, hotter than his fingers, and more pliant than warm wax. He found himself moving with her. His long fingers fanned out over her back, encompassing it entirely. The heat of her body bled through her clothes.

He yearned to cradle her to his chest, crowd into her body, and nestle in beside her soul. Her tongue flickered, and a groan tore from his throat with the force of his want. But now she broke away, eyes gleaming, lips parted. A shy, thrilled smile bloomed across her face.

His insides had fallen to water, boiling water, that burst in fits and starts into steam. He could barely breathe, let alone speak.

"Erik, it was - with Meg - I was - we were practising."

He nodded. Her scent still filled his nostrils. His skin sparked with little firecrackers. The memory of her tongue-

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, dear Christine." Even his voice came out different, dark and gravelly. Her lips parted. He watched them.

Christine swallowed and composed herself by looking at the buttons on his jacket.

"I love Meg, I do. And I know that even though we enjoy the things we do together, it's the love between friends." She brushed her hair behind her ears, bringing her burning cheeks into view.

"The feelings I have for you are different, Erik. I think of you always. When you look at me, I think I might drown. When you smile at me, I think I might burn up like the sun. When you sit with me, I can think of no greater peace. I am flotsam in your tide.

"Maybe you don't feel the same, but I had to tell you. We women have to know what we want and go for it. Else, we'll end up like poor Francesca on the arm of some crude, triple-chinned, old bogeyman."

He got the feeling that was a direct quote from Meg.

"If you don't want me that way, it's okay. Nothing has to change. You said you'd be my teacher forever and ever, after all."

She returned her gaze to him with every calmness and laughed a little to herself. "Meg was right - there's no way I could've said all that without a little practice."

At his continued silence, her smile slipped.

"I just had to tell you. We can put it behind us. Truly, I feel lighter already." She placed a hand on his arm. "Erik?"

When he didn't reply, she sighed and stood up from the piano bench. She stared at the far wall of the room, breathing deeply, fixing her entirely perfect hair. He sat, staring at the stitching on his sleeve where her hand last lay, trying to process it all. She - she _wanted _him?

"I suppose those roses meant nothing, after all," she muttered.

"You knew about them, too?" He looked up. A queer smile wobbled on her face.

"Of course! Do you think I'm daft?" She looked down. "Oh, who am I kidding? I'm definitely daft. Look, Maestro, I don't think I can sing today. I will go onto the roof and ask you not to follow me." She was leaving. She was leaving him. After that?

Well, of course she was. He'd shown all the reciprocity of a slab of wood! As she packed up her sheaves of music and made for the door, he swung his legs over the bench and said the first coherent thing that came to his tongue.

"Christine, I love you." She stopped, her back facing him. Was that too direct? It must have been too direct. "I mean. Your feelings are reciprocated. I would like to court you." Jesus, but that was stilted and overly formal.

"I mean. Thinking of your laughter soothes me to sleep every night. I would like to make you laugh every day as long as there is breath in me." And that was quite possibly very creepy. She turned around, eyes huge, biting both of her lips.

"I mean. If you have a thing for Meg we can work with that too." Now she laughed, the sound bold and free as a high wind. "I mean-"

"Erik. Maestro. Stop." Christine returned to him, sporting his favourite dawning grin. It made his heart glitter in his breast as a dewdrop glitters on a rose. "Just you and me," she said. "I would be delighted."


End file.
